star trek: the next generation, season 6

6x01 “time’s arrow, part 2”

kinda just more of the same from the previous episode, assuming you’ve read my review of season 5.

this could’ve used a bit more fish out of water-type stuff for the rest of the crew that joined data in 19th century san francisco. i almost wonder if they had that in mind when they sent so many characters back in time at the end of the season finale but just didn’t end up capitalizing on it when they wrote part 2. it just seems silly that most of the show’s major characters went back to the past and didn’t really end up having much to do there? but oh well.

hellraiser franchise megareview, part 2

hellraiser: inferno (video 2000)

“ah, the eternal refrain of humanity. pleading ignorance. begging for mercy.”

the dtv era starts with a movie brave enough to ask the question “what if hellrasier was a really plodding noir?” the director/co-writer forcefully denies the persistent rumor that this was an unrelated script that got massaged into a hellraiser movie, but pinhead himself claims it was, so honestly who the fuck knows? whatever the case may be, it sure is pretty bad!!

like, when i realized this was a noir i thought there was a strong chance of me actually enjoying it in spite of its badness? but they would’ve needed to turn up the noir elements to almost parodic degrees of intensity for it to have worked on that level. so instead we just have a pretty boring noir with some occasional awesome (but not nearly enough) cenobite shit. alas. d-rank

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

hellraiser: hellseeker (video 2002)

“which do you find more exhilarating, pain or pleasure? personal, i prefer pain.”

i’m a guy with amnesia who every single woman in this movie wants to bone for some reason. i’m going to spend the whole movie trying to piece together whether or not i murdered my wife. all i know for sure is my car went flying into a lake in the first few minutes of this movie, shortly after you realized i was played by the guy from all those insurance commercials. what were the odds. and with your cut-rate insurance, you could be paying for this yourself. so get allstate. you can save money and be better protected from mayhem. like me.

okay but seriously, this one is weird as fuck? but that actually makes it a slight but noticeable improvement over both its predecessor & its successor. i was rolling my eyes at this movie throughout quite a bit of its runtime, but that’s still better than sighing with disinterest, y’know? also there was some genuinely kinky shit in this. though it frequently was like two seconds sandwiched between various women throwing themselves at the mayhemtagonist in the most thoroughly cable tv unsexy “sexy” ways ever. fucking straight people, i swear. maybe that’s the real torture.

halloween ends? more like my patience ends

there’s not sticking the landing and then there’s teetering & flailing for a frankly uncomfortably long time before flopping straight on your face, and the halloween legacyquels opt quite decisively for the latter.

i spent the first half or so of halloween ends thinking, “okay, i sort of see what they’re setting up, i’m not sure i like it but i guess we’ll see what they do with it” and i kept waiting. and kept waiting. and kept waiting. and it became increasingly clear that they weren’t going to “do” anything with any of this, it was just sort of stuff happening, man.

like, in basically every technical aspect of filmmaking this movie is beyond competent, so it’s easy to be lulled into thinking it’s a perfectly serviceable movie by its solid moment-to-moment entertainment factor, but it just doesn’t add up to anything.

despite never really “losing interest” per se, i turned on this movie hard about halfway through it when i realized it was just thoroughly wasting my time, and subjecting me to plenty of unpleasant bullshit in the process. all while acting like it was a Serious movie with Things To Say.

hellraiser franchise megareview, part 1 (1986-96)

“we have such sights to show you.”

the hellbound heart (novella 1986)

by clive barker

“don’t try to fight. it’s quite beyond your control. you have to accompany me.”

i saw hellraiser long before i read this novella it was based on, so the main thing that jumped out at me was just how surprisingly close this was to the movie. like, if i didn’t know better i would’ve believed the hellbound heart was a novelization (novellaization?) of hellraiser rather than hellraiser being a film adaptation of the hellbound heart.

avatar megareview, part 1 (2009-12)

yeah, hi, it me, the dumbass unironic avatar fan. i did it, i went ahead and read all the avatar books because i’m a fucking nerd.

hocus pocus 2 recaptures the magic

“i’m a witch, i know things.”

alright i’m going to start by trying to talk  about the elephant that was conjured in the middle of the room with some degree of nuance so we can move on to talking about the really terrific movie i just saw that i’m pretty fucking excited about. but yeah i expect i’m not going to be the one breaking this particular news to you, and if i am i’m sorry, but yes bette midler tweeted something kinda terfy and when our community understandably expressed hurt & frustration she issued a non-apology apology. my take on the whole thing is that we’re not so much dealing with a venomous politically savvy terf like j.k. rowling but more just like a clueless, somewhat out of touch old lady who’s doing her best, so i’m somewhat willing to give her a “forgive her, mother, for she knows not what she does” on this one. ymmv, there may be stuff i’m missing, etc etc.

spooky movie season theme: werewolf!, part 1

the wolf man (movie 1941)

i reviewed this one super recently, so i don’t have anything all that interesting to add tbh! while we were watching it my boyfriend mentioned he super wished the movie had been from the point of view of all the drastically smarter romani people (seriously, even in this racist-ass movie they are blatantly smarter & more helpful than any of the white people), and yeah that would’ve been a much better movie. i mean, not the way it would’ve been made by white people in 1941, but you know.